Tutorial: How to Use Cerebro to Find the Best Keywords for Your Listings and Amazon Advertising

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Cerebro is Helium 10's reverse ASIN search tool. This powerful tool identifies the most effective keywords to build into your product listing and Ads. Cerebro is a sophisticated tool with a huge pool of filters that allows you to cast a wide net and then narrow the keyword catch down to only the most relevant and effective words ranked by Amazon for a specific product. This article covers the basic dashboard and all the possible search and sorting options available. 

1. To use Cerebro, you must have one or more product ASINs to use as the basis of your search. Go to Amazon (amazon.com is linked here--be sure to select the marketplace you are selling in) to search for a product. You may or may not want to limit the category.

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2. Choose a product you want to research.

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3. You can copy the product's ASIN from the search page or from the product page.

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4. You can open Cerebro in more than one way. First, you can simply click on the Keywords link located in the Helium 10 Chrome Extension bar graph box under the product image. To have this box activated, of course, you need to be using the Chrome browser. Clicking on Keywords initiates the browser to go to Helium10.com and to open Cerebro.

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Or, you can also open a new browser window and log into your Helium 10 account, then click on and activate Cerebro. This method is probably more typical if you are planning to enter more than one ASIN in your search.

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5. Paste the ASIN number you copied from Amazon's product page into the search field. You can search up to ten ASINs in one search. Simply paste them in one at a time.

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The more ASINs you plug in, the higher the number of keywords in the results. Sometimes you may want to search broadly across several products, and other times you'll want to narrow down to just one or two competing products.

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6. Select the correct marketplace from the URL drop-down menu. ASIN and search results will vary by country.

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7. Click on the Get Keywords button, and Cerebro will start its search.

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8. Cerebro's basic search brings up a lot of initial data as well as a list of all identified keywords.

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9. The first box shows the main image of the product searched, along with its title, ASIN, and the country it's sold in. If you've searched for more than one ASIN, they appear as a slide show. Just click on the forward or backward buttons to cycle through them.

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10. The second box, titled Distribution, shows the distribution of the ASIN(s)'s indexed keywords in total, breaking out which ones are Sponsored, Amazon Recommended, and/or Organic. Sponsored keywords are the keywords this ASIN is using to run advertising on Amazon. Amazon Recommended keywords are the words Amazon itself recommends for this product for advertising purposes. Organic keywords are the actual words Amazon customers have typed in and used to locate this product.

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11. The third box, titled Frequently Bought Together, displays the products that are often bought simultaneously with the searched product. When you click on the text at the bottom, Cerebro opens a new Amazon window with all the items customers have bought along with your searched product. This data benefits you when you are choosing products with which to potentially associate your Ad campaigns.

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12. Clicking on any of the images in the Frequently Bought Together box will take you directly to the product page on Amazon.

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13. While the screen in Cerebro shows only the top three Frequently Bought Together items, clicking on the text inside the box opens the Product Targeting tab in Black Box, along with all the products Amazon data reveals—some possibly relevant, some not—that customers have recently purchased in the same transaction as the product with the ASIN you're researching. 

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14. The fourth box, Word Frequency, collects all the words that appear in the keyword search. The parenthesis after each word notes how many times each word appears alone or as part of a phrase, according to Amazon. This lets you see which are the most frequently used keywords with this ASIN. 

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15. Clicking on the Get Competitors button pulls up a screen with the 20 top competing products that share many of the same keywords. If you click on a specific product's ASIN in the new screen, Cerebro adds it to your ASIN list and opens a new window that takes you to the Amazon product page for that ASIN.

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16. Now, let's close the main competitors' window and come back to the search results page. At this point, you'll want to scan down to see which words and phrases Cerebro has identified for this ASIN. There's generally a lot of data. The default list is essentially the order in which the results load from Cerebro's search. 

You may find that the best way to read the data is to look at the organic rank column, which will show which position each keyword is organically ranking for in descending order.  Cerebro lets you sort the data according to the criteria you want to analyze, either by clicking on a column heading or using the "Sort by:" drop-down menu located in the upper left corner of the list.

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17. Click on the first heading, Cerebro IQ Score. This score, calculated by Helium 10, rates products by comparing the number and popularity of products available to the number of organic searches using those specific keyword(s). The higher the number, the more likely the product will rank well. 

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18. Click on the Search Volume column heading to see which search terms customers are typing in most often for this type of product.

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19. Click on Sponsored ASINs to see how many individual paid ads have been using these keyword(s) recently.

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20. If you want to see how many competing products are indexed by Amazon for the keyword(s) listed, sort the results by the Competing Products column heading.

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21. The CPR 8-Day Giveaways column reports how many products you'd have to give away or sell heavily discounted in just over a week in order to rank on the first page of a product search using these words. 

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22. The Match Type column shows the various ways in which the keywords are ranking the ASIN product you're researching. A O means that the product is organically ranking in the first 306 positions when a customer types that word or phrase into Amazon's search field. An A means that the product is ranked as a recommended keyword by Amazon. S means that the product is ranking somewhere in the top 96 sponsored positions when this keyword(s) is searched. This column doesn't have a sorting function.

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23. The Amazon Recommended Rank column shows whether or not a keyword(s) is ranked for Amazon Recommended and how high it is ranked.

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24. The second to last column, Sponsored Rank, shows where the product appears on a search results page when it's running a paid ad using the specified keyword(s).

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25. The final column reports the product's Organic rank when a customer searches for that particular keyword. 

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26. If you use Cerebro to search on a primary ASIN plus one or more additional ASINs, you'll get a slightly different results list. The multi-ASIN search includes columns of comparison between the first ASIN in the search field and the competitors, as well as enlarging the potential list of keywords associated with the products.

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27. The multi-ASIN search results include data of comparison between the primary ASIN and all the additional secondary ASINs.

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28. Two columns continue to show the primary ASIN's data, but now in relation to both the keywords it's individually ranked for and how it ranks against the competing ASINs' ranking keywords. 

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29. The Cerebro multi-ASIN search also provides data on the competing ASIN's product. Some of it appears on the dashboard, and some only show if you download the data into a spreadsheet. 

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30. To download the data to your computer, click on the Export button in the upper right corner. Once you choose the format you prefer, Cerebro will quickly download the results. Particularly large lists of search results might take a few minutes to process and download.

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31. Now that you've reviewed all the initial results, it's time to refine your search. Let's scan back up our results page and look at the additional and Advanced Search options.

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32. Cerebro allows you to set a range for keyword Search Volume. For example, maybe you only want to see common customer searches, or maybe, instead, you want to locate the rare search term. This filter allows you to narrow the range to your exact needs.

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33. Helium 10's Cerebro IQ Score can help you find keywords with a high search volume but few competing products.

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34. Knowing which keyword(s) customers are actually searching that Amazon is then ranking a product for is very important. If you want to compete against a product, you'll need to know the ranking keywords before you create a listing or run an ad campaign. Helium 10 lets you control the range of Organic keyword searches in your analysis.

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35. Cerebro defaults the Word Count of the search at two words, but you can make it one word, or more than two, especially if you're looking for common long tail keywords.

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36. The Match Type filter lets you limit the type of results to include or exclude Organic, Sponsored, or Amazon Recommended.

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37. Under the Amazon Choice filter, you can determine whether the product you are searching has Amazon's Choice badge for a given keyword(s), whether a competing product holds the badge for a keyword(s), or which keywords do not return any results with products holding the Amazon Choice badge.

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38. Under Advanced Filters, Cerebro allows you to isolate and refine your keyword search results for Amazon's Recommended rank, Sponsored rank, and Competing Products and to include or exclude specific words. Although you can select how you want to sort and organize the keyword rankings in the results list, these filters allow you to narrow down the broader results to a list of highly specific keywords.

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39. You can also set the range for Sponsored Rank under Advanced Filters as well. 

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40. To see the keywords for a specific range of competing products, set the minimum and maximum numbers relative to the desired results.

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41. Finally, as you filter down your keywords list, you can directly target or eliminate specific words.

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42. You can use the Common Words button to also eliminate words that are not unique to your ASIN keyword search.

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43. Click Add Common Words (or Delete all Common Words to delete) to type in the words you wish to remove from the search results. When you've typed in the word, click on Add Common Words.

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44. Cerebro adds your typed words into its Common Words bank and removes them from the listed results for keywords.

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45. Once you have narrowed your list to your satisfaction, you can do several things with it. Click on the Export Button in the top right corner to either 1) export to your computer as a CSV or Excel file, 2) copy the list to paste it to your Clipboard, or 3) transfer the words to Helium 10's Frankenstein Tool. 

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46. Helium 10's Cerebro saves all your keyword searches. If you ever want to return to the search results from another time, simply click on the History button in the top menu, and a new window will open up with a list of all your searches. You can delete old searches or continue work on a recent search from this window.

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47. To learn more ways to use Cerebro, click on the LEARN button or go to Helium 10's website to view the PRO Training videos. Helium 10 also has hundreds of informational videos on its YouTube channel. Finally, to follow and learn how other Amazon sellers use Helium 10's tools, subscribe to the Serious Sellers Podcast and/or join the Helium 10 Users group on Facebook.

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